Calcutta Diary

August 31, 1974 Calcutta Diary DESPITE the hopelessness in the air, despite the claustrophobic listlessness, to dream remains an inalienable human right, permitted even to a citizen of this bedevilled nation. The plight of the economy could not be worse, inflation rages unfettered and uninhibited, the distress of the masses mounts from week to week and month to month, the central objectives of the nation appear to be stuck deep in a morass. Yet dreamers there will be, who will continue to dream. They will keep hoping that, come the next corner, a new vista is bound to be revealed. They will keep dreaming that once this Saturday's particular unsavoury episode passes into history, the subsequent events will be wholesome and honest, and gloriously straightforward. They will keep imagining that, once the present series of official and quasi-official unscrupulousness runs its course, in the coming days everyone will turn Simon Pure. One can contemplate what the model of such a dream could be, the dream that will be at the top of the heap, that will put into shade all other bold and wonderful dreams that one could think of.